The walk along the beach to the far side of Tempest Bay took longer than he’d expected. But it gave him his first real walked-in sense of the whole shoreline, of how it shifted and changed the further east you went. It felt like hopscotching across decades and even centuries.
First came the line of seven cottages. They’d once been identical, placed there nearly a century ago as vacation privileges for depression workers and military families. Now they were boutique, each altered and fixed up in its own way. Some with flower beds, or doublewide windows, or one with a weathered rowboat hung on hooks along its west wall. All their back porches stepped right onto the sand.
Hedy seemed happy to be down off the clifftop. Yet also apprehensive.
Lucia’s a weather vane, isn’t she, said Hedy. Lives in a different world.
Lucia had squirmed and complained and tantrumed at not being allowed to come with them then finally retreated to the tower, which she began climbing as the best available form of protest.
She’s a damn pain, the man said.
Feels like the world’s been a puzzle for her, Hedy said.
World’s a puzzle for everyone, the man said. My aim is to find her a place where she can truly live. Or make her one.
Is that why you’re heading south? Hedy said.
Partly, he said.
Kids and families playing beach cricket by a crumbling surt hut. Delighted shouts and yells.
Tell me about your world, Hedy said. Things I might not know. Where’d you come from?
Sorry, he said. I don’t share much.
No you just do kind things by accident then grumble about them, Hedy said. I’m on to you. Gimme something.
So he told her a little story but didn’t finish it, not really, because of course there were truths he would never share, things that would stay locked inside him forever.
• • •
I was raised in a small American town far from the ocean. Flat as dirt, encroached by endless woods. We lived on the edge of town, me and my Pa, next to a junkyard. Sam’s junkyard. No idea who Sam was but he’d been long gone and no one had repainted his old sign in years.
Eight years old I saw the world a certain way. A way that didn’t sit well with things like school and manners and fitting in. I still went to school. Every day I’d trudge in from the edge of town, into all that whitewashed concrete, and I’d try to survive.
You have to go, my Pa said. You have to go because this is the way of the world. There’s expectations and rituals and observances and for the most part it’s better to go along with it even when it doesn’t fit you or it’s stupid. Learn to navigate rather than resist, life’ll be easier.
I don’t want life to be easier, I said. I just want to understand where the real action is.
You sayin’ you don’t know already? Pa said with a smirk. Way you talk I thought you knew everything. Eight years old, universe solved.
I looked at him with my face heating up. He would listen to me very patiently sometimes, and understood me better than anyone, but he also liked to take the piss out of me and I didn’t know how to handle that. Eight is a self-serious age.
I understand school’s a crock of bull, I said. And I understand I don’t understand much else, and you know that, so don’t laugh at me.
He put his hand in my hair and rubbed my head. He had a red beard and blue-gray eyes and smelt like a brand of cigarettes I’ve never been able to locate.
You’re not going to accept anything prepackaged or handed down, Pa said. I know this about you, boy. I love it about you. And I’m not suggesting you go take studying and all the rest of it to heart. I’m saying pick your game. Learn to stay off their radar. Then you get space to do whatever you decide is important. School board comes knocking on our door, neither of us gets that.
I’ll go to school, I said. But I’m not believing a word they say.
Good, he said, laughing as he headed towards the junkyard. Glad we cleared that up. Now I’ve got possums to attend to and you’ve got an education waiting.
• • •
I was the opposite way, Hedy said in rejoinder. Could never hide it. People talk about tendencies we’re born with, like maybe someone’s an optimist, or a pessimist, or just an arsehole, you know. Well from the earliest times I can remember, I was a confusionist. No fucking clue, and it was written all over my face every day I breathed.
My earliest memory is of this blinding wave of input, sensory overload, lights and sounds and emotions and voices all flowing over me like a roaring river. Me drowning in it, trying to get to the riverbank or at least to a rock or a reed, something to hold onto, a place where I could take a breath and figure things out a little. Make sense of all this creation.
You ever have the feeling you don’t know where the scissors are? Or what drawer to put the stickers in? When you’re supposed to look people in the eye? How everyone’s gotten their sandwiches so white and tasty? What to say when spoken to?
Over and over and over again, this constant wrongness and angle to the world, that you’re born into and want to be friends with but simply don’t understand. It’s not about professional diagnosis, either. That’s not a track to go down.
• • •
If we all fit into someone’s chart, the chart’s not big or strange enough, the man said.
Damn straight, Hedy said. Damn straight.
• • •
Further on there was a break where the Splash tidal inlet creased north. The way he’d seen old naked Jessica go earlier. They looked at each other.
It’s about one foot deep, Hedy said. Man up.
They sploshed across to the east. A line of mangrove-like bushes led them to a strangely disjointed section, rocks sticking out of the water on one side and a playground running next to the walls of the Tomorrow Shines housing development on the other.
They were nearly past when he realised a group of children were lurking in the mangrove bushes, watching them like wolves.
• • •
In the shadow of the eastern cliffs the beach became narrow and filled with boulders. The ocean was calmer here, certainly less fierce than the waves that lashed the cliff base under the ruined tower. A small jetty pushed out into the water and on that jetty sat a man with a fishing pole and a bait tin.
He was round and unshaven with his belly hanging out and his feet just brushing the ocean. A radio tuned to an AM frequency, playing old music. Someone with a kiwi accent bopping about the Outlook for Thursday.
Ey up, the fisherman said as they approached.
Strange place for fishing, Hedy said. Better luck down near the surf.
Oh I just like the feel of the water, the fisherman said. All the things that might wriggle past me toes.
Fair enough, Hedy said.
That and the solitude, the fisherman said pointedly. Bit of an escape.
We’re up at the cliffs, Hedy said. At the old campervan.
Ahh, the fisherman said. That was Walter’s, that was. Remember when he hauled it up there. Great kerfuffle. Used to leave his undies all round the tower. Digging things up in the nude.
Hedy produced the old photo. The woman with blue hair. Hedy’s mother.
Ever seen this? she said.
No, said the fisherman, barely looking at it. ’Fraid not.
The man stepped forward. Into the fisherman’s comfort space. Echoes of his old life rising.
You sure you weren’t in town earlier? the man said softly. Didn’t give it to a little girl, like some sort of present? A present for a little girl?
The fisherman looked scared.
Nowt to do with me, he said. I try and stay out of everyone’s way. Figured you’re here about the ’ermit cave.
The fisherman cocked his head. Looking back from the dock towards the cliffs, tucked behind an eight foot high boulder and almost invisible, was a wooden door set into the rock. It looked as though someone long ago had trussed heavy saw-cut logs from the hills, dragged them down here, and filled in the mouth of a natural opening. In the middle of the door was a small grille that would give some light and let the person inside see out, though not much.
Hedy stared. The man stared.
Your cave, then? Hedy asked.
Oh no, the fisherman said. Communal. Use and use alike. Me, I’m up in a room above the Idle Hour in town. Been there for an age. Nice bit of toast at the Doris early mornings.
So people use it? Just wander down when they feel like it?
Yeah, the fisherman said. When the mood takes. Mostly just those who know how things work here. The kids from the housing development tear along the beach sometimes, little shits, but they seem to know to stay clear. Everyone needs a little time away from the world, eh?
The fisherman burped. Tied his rod with a sprat from his tin.
See, we’re pragmatic here in Tempest Bay, the fisherman said. People need sewage pipes and telephone lines and all that, but they also need a cave sometimes. We all do. A town’s about needs. You want a cheese toastie round noon, you go to the Doris. You want a good spot for fucking, well, up on the hill trails above the car tunnel, near the poncy houses. And you want to be alone with yourself, it’s the Hermit.
Did you ever know the woman in that photo? Hedy spoke with a strange, urgent desperation. Came here with her daughter, but went missing?
The fisherman looked again, longer. Frowned.
When would this’ve been?
Twenty seven years ago, Hedy said. In the summer.
Ahh, the fisherman said, his face changing. That was the last big storm. Can’t help the weather, love. Sorry. And mind the grate in there.
He turned back to his work and his sprats and wouldn’t respond to anything else.
The man couldn’t help but notice that the hook on the fisherman’s rod was made of polished bone, gleaming white in the sunlight.
• • •
The door was heavy and weathered but gave easily. As they passed into the cave he noticed tufts of whisper fingers in the hingecracks. He’d still never seen anything quite like those spindly, grasping plants with their purple tops.
Inside the way shifted and narrowed, climbing slightly before opening into a dark chamber. The light shrunk to almost nothing, and he was reminded of childhood terrors in the Maze of Amaze and was about to turn around and leave when Hedy bunked a switch to their right that he’d missed in his rising panic.
Wire-hung lights flicked on. The hermit cave was small, perhaps twenty feet by fifteen. Its floor was earth and rock covered in places by blankets. There were kauri-wood bookshelves with old paperbacks and ornaments. A wash basin. A spring-touch bed with no mattress. An antique radio sitting on a rickety side table next to a battery torch. The air tasted bitter but the cave was surprisingly dry and liveable. The door must keep out most animals and other intrusions.
There was even, in an oddly homey touch, a bedside lamp, presumably powered by the same source as the lights but giving better night-time comfort.
Wonder how bedclothes work, Hedy said. Maybe you bring a sleeping bag with you.
He felt the heaviness of the rock cliffs weighing down on them, the enclosed funnelling sound of the ocean outside.
I’d never stay here, he said. This place is a prison.
I’d bloody stay here, Hedy said as she wandered. Options are overrated.
An iron fixture on the far side, covering something. The fisherman had said something about a grate. The man hauled it aside. A crawlspace like an ancient lava tube. No more than two feet high.
He really, really, really didn’t want to go in there. His palms felt slick even looking at it. His throat felt constricted. Old fears of dark confined areas and the horrors they bring.
He looked at Hedy. Saw the same fear, but something else. A need to know. A need to know yet a paralysed sense of inertia.
Options are overrated.
Help me come down off this clifftop.
Lucia would’ve happily scampered in. Damn her. On stubborn, scared instinct he grabbed the battery torch from the table. Flicked it on. Hunkered down and shuffled in. Felt Hedy behind him, following. Felt thankful for that small solidarity.
• • •
Crawling in the claustrophobic dark. The torch no help here. So black you could feel the back of your eyeballs. This lava tube longer than creation itself. Images playing out on the inside of their skulls. Memory horrors flowing. Talking to keep themselves sane.
Stacks of corrugated iron in the junkyard, the man said. Tyres and car skeletons and old paint cans with deluxe colours on them. Remnants everywhere that my imagination would fill. Structures that weren’t prison cells. Just opportunities.
My Dad would make adventures with me. Set up treasure hunts or monster escapes or dungeon treks. The Maze of Amaze, he called it. I loved it. A different adventure every time, with this universe shifting and reconstructing itself around me. Cardboard cutout monsters. Mechanical contraptions. Riddles and secrets. Those afternoons and early evenings were bliss. When the rest of the world was just an overwhelming mystery to me, here, with my Dad, was territory I could explore and conquer and be alive in.
At night I’d lie in bed and hear the possums in the junkyard. Squealing with these human-like voices. It was eerie. I’d be half-awake and try and navigate my thoughts towards the sound. Like there were lines of a song and I was trying to move along them. Like the planet Venus above was watching.
Crawling crawling crawling. His throat choking with the smell of ancient rock. Keep moving or the fear will eat you.
My Mum always wanted me to express myself, Hedy said in the dark. She had colored hair back before that was a thing, and she smelled like calla lilies. Just this big, kind, loving presence.
The man had the curious feeling that she, like him, was creeping around the edge of something.
Dunedain Primary School, Hedy said. Seven years old, one year before I first visited Tempest Bay. At break one day we found an old rope round the back end of the schoolyard. Someone had left it there. And I got it tied around my waist with a big, ridiculous knot that was somehow very effective. I mean this thing was loops and twists and all sorts of shit but it was locked in place. And I couldn’t get it off. Other kids tried, didn’t work. So the bell rang and I’m getting frantic because if I miss another class I’m In Trouble, which meant the strap, so I pull my t-shirt down over the rope and I loop the ends into the back pocket of my shorts, and I go to class.
And now I’m sitting on the mat. This endless blue space we all have to sit on and be quiet while Miss Connell talks with this big plastic smile on her face.
Miss Connell. General studies teacher. She had long hairy arms and smelt like mothballs. But her hair was always immaculate. A high beehive. She’d spend hours down at the hairdresser’s in the centre of town under one of those old dryers. Watching everyone go by with angry eyes. She seemed like she was angry a lot of the time, though maybe I was misunderstanding that, being who I was.
Scots primary school is hard even if you’re normal. The key to getting through it was to listen and smile. Miss Connell likes to be listened to. And if she spots this rope round my waist, I’m buggered.
But now I’m fidgeting. Because I really need to go to the bathroom. But it’s not bathroom time. I’m trying hard to follow the rules and Be Good. I can hold it. Even though the rope I tied round my waist is digging in tight, right into my guts I can do it—
Then Tracey Cadogan, the little bitch, who I’d been in love with three weeks ago, points at me and says look, Hedy, she’s got a giant shit in her pants. And the rope did look like that.
Miss Connell looms. Peers. Considers.
Stand up Hedy now, she says. Stand up and let me see what you’ve done.
I refused. Bugger that. But it doesn’t help. Miss Connell snatches forward like a banshee. Plucks my ankle and holds me aloft, upside down. She has incredible strength. She scrunches my t-shirt and stares at the rope around my waist. Begins tearing at it, as though the knots themselves and the very existence of this thing enrage her. Growling as she does it. Determined to tear me open. But only making the knots tighter.
I feel a roaring in my ears, as though being upside down is coalescing the universe. My body shifts, something aligned in the world.
Now I should also say that back when this happened, the biggest part of my diet was orange-coloured sugar water. You’d get the sachets out of the cupboard, mix it up in water, and drink it down. I don’t even know if they have stuff like that any more.
So my body, my scrawny awkward seven year old little body, is like a water balloon at this point. And MIss Connell, holding me upside down and yanking at the shit-coloured rope round my waist, is playing with fire.
Something releases. Bliss inside me. A dribbly hissing shower of orange child urine rains down everywhere, all through Miss Connell’s exquisite hair and makeup.
She screams. Somehow, to me, the pandemonium sounds like the first notes of a distant song.
I was trying to be good. I really was. Avoid Trouble. But sometimes you just need to paint the world with your own piss. And maybe that moment, too, is when I decided to be a weather scientist. Of sorts.
• • •
He laughed. Long and loud in the claustrophobic dark. Felt his lungs tearing but it didn’t matter. Felt Hedy’s surprise, behind him.
Didn’t expect to get that out’ve you, she said. Thought I was stuck up on that cliftop with a humourless arsehole.
And finally, they emerged.
• • •
This space was more like a crack, wending deep into the cliffs. The torchlight revealed high jagged ceilings and rough rock floors and none of the niceties of the hermit cave—
Oh, he heard Hedy gulp behind him, just as it hit him and he waved the torch wildly—
Images. Paintings everywhere, walls roof and floor. Paintings and markings and effusions in all conceivable materials. Layers upon layers of them, painted over and around and interacting with each other. A century-old conversation of mad people in the dark, out of time with each other and the world and themselves.
There were things in those paintings that told you exactly what it was to be under the weather, apart from yourself, having something inside you pouring relentlessly and violently out onto the raw materials of the void. The tower. The sea. Buildings from in town. One building, in particular, coloured green with eyes looking out of it. But he couldn’t tell which one it was supposed to be.
On instinct he flicked the torch off. The after-image of it all burned in his mind. Behind it all the vast spreading shadow of something. Like things peering over a wall. Through the cracks of reality, down on them.
Torch back on. A cry from Hedy. Something over in a rocky corner. A single smashed arm of the Dramolite. She gathered it up, turned it over in her hands.
I wonder if she was here once, Hedy said in a very small voice in the dark. If this was something she was doing while I was sploshing down on the beach and making stupid sandcastles all those mornings.
He said nothing.
They searched the hidden gallery as long as they could stand it but found no other traces or clues. It was all up on the walls, in the dark. All of it. He wondered what would happen if the things on these walls ever met the things in his own mind, in the Maze of Amaze.
• • •
When they emerged from the hermit cave of Tempest Bay the sun was lower than it should’ve been and the sky was flooded with colour. The heavyset fisherman was gone from his perch on the jetty, and the water of an incoming tide was lapping at the pilings.
The man noticed somehow that there were rough knot-ends of rope dangling from the far end of the structure, and that at high tide it would be the perfect height for a body to hang with full clearance. Here so close, just a few steps, from the hermit cave door.
The last thing he felt, completely unbidden and unmeasurable as they headed back along the beach in silence, was a sense of two men, not one, sitting beside each other on the dock, a long time ago. Another afterimage. Another crack in the walls.